


Every Seven Years

by delabaissé (missyay)



Series: For the Better [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Asexual Character, F/M, Gender Issues, Genderqueer Character, M/M, Modern AU, Sexuality Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-10 04:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1154719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missyay/pseuds/delabaiss%C3%A9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling for Enjolras is a natural force, there is no escaping it. (Combeferre doesn’t want to escape, because this is the first time he’s felt like he’s important, like he’s making a difference. To Enjolras if not to anyone else.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These are the drabbles from First Sights, arranged to fit characters. There was too much overlap going on, so I decided to dissolve First Sights into multiple fanfictions, one for each character, as I wrote new chapters. So if you've read First Sights, you know the first chapter of this one, but the latest will be a new one.

Combeferre and Enjolras have been in the same class from the very beginning of Collège, but Combeferre first notices him at age fifteen. That is, he _notices_ him before, since it is impossible not to: Enjolras is proud and angry and refuses to be silenced by anything that is not an argument he accepts.

But at age fifteen, they have a discussion in Philosophy that prevents Combeferre from ever passing Enjolras without a second look again. It's about homosexuality, and promises to become truly horrible: There's snickering and shifting and hissed insults, and Combeferre usually doesn't exactly _care_ , but there's only so much he can take - and then Enjolras stands up. He doesn't raise his hand, he doesn't shout back at those who have been whisper-calling him names for the past few minutes; he just stands up.

"Yes?" Madame Hiver says, with a tight-lipped smile. "Did you want something?"

"Would it be at all possible, Madame Hiver, for me to take over from here? This subject is very close to me."

Mme Hiver is speechless for a second. Having someone take over the class is something she considers a punishment so grave she's never dared inflicting it on anyone. "By all means," she says, after a moment, and stands up to take his place.

Enjolras comes up to the board, seemingly oblivious to the whispered conversations around him. "We learn about homosexuality in school because our government has agreed that children need to know about diversity, but sadly our school system is slow to react to changes in society," he says, his expression grave. Combeferre feels like he’s really seeing for the first time. Enjolras doesn’t look nervous, or any different than he does when he talks to his friends: if anything, he looks more _alive_. This is his element, his purpose. "There is a lot more to gender and sexuality than just homosexuality and heterosexuality, and there always has been. But we have not always been free to discover it. We have that freedom now, and I intend to use it by speaking up about these issues.”

“Are you trying to tell us you’re gay, Enjolras?” Thomas asks, barely containing his laughter.

“Are you asking because your opinion of my arguments depends on my answer?”

“I’m asking because why else would you stand up and make an argument for gays,” he counters.

“Yeah,” Enjolras says, voice dripping with sarcasm, “why would anyone stand up for someone they’re not? Where would that get us? Let me tell you where. _Here._ The French Revolution, for example, wouldn’t have been possible without educated people speaking up for those who couldn’t afford an education.” Combeferre risks a look around and sees all faces turned to Enjolras. He has their attention, no question. (He doesn’t have their approval, though. Enjolras seems to care more about speaking his mind than about changing theirs; his tone his harsh and his voice fierce and he doesn't give them any time to consider. He just crushes them with arguments, leaving them stunned but unchanged in the long run.)

Enjolras goes on: “Have you ever wondered, though, why _gay_ is such an insult to so many of you?”

Blank stares and whispering. Enjolras purses his lips, and this is the moment Combeferre realises that Enjolras _could_ go on for the rest of the lesson with nobody having his back, he’s _prepared_ to do it, even, but it would probably still ruin his day.

Combeferre raises his hand. Enjolras sees it and almost smiles. “Yes?” he says.

“Most people think that being attracted to men makes you less of one yourself,” Combeferre answers.

“Exactly, which is absolute bullshit – pardon, Mme Hiver, I did not say that – because gender and sexuality are two different things entirely. And also, it isn’t even an explanation. Why would it be? Why is it so insulting to a man to be called feminine or effeminate? Do we seriously hate women that much?”

At this point, he turns to Thomas. “You will notice, Thomas, that I defend women as well. I’ll have you know, though, that I am not, in fact, a woman myself, nor am I planning to become one in the near future.”

Combeferre grins, and this time, Enjolras actually smiles back at him.

Combeferre knows that he’s screwed at that precise moment, but he is yet to discover how _much._


	2. Chapter 2

Combeferre has never had a best friend before, and now that he does, he is firmly opposed to the notion that if you’ve never had what you’re missing out on, you don’t feel the lack of it. Because he did know loneliness before he knew what not being lonely felt like, he just couldn’t articulate it: a dull ache, a bitter twist, a nothingness that pulled at his set jaw and made getting up in the mornings harder. Just because he assumed those to be the standard human background noises of nuisances everyone had to go up against every day, doesn’t make it any less painful.

Then again, he doesn’t think that a constant state of happiness (and it feels like that’s what it’s coming to) will make the happiness he’s experiencing ever feel any less important either. So there’s that.

And his long years of loneliness also mean that he’s going to hold on to and fight for every ounce of happiness that he can get a hold of, whether it means to look up and angle a bright smile at the teacher who catches them talking in his class, and drawls, mocking: “Les amis, if you’d keep your no doubt intimate conversations to yourselves during my lesson,” or to stubbornly refuse to feel mocked anytime they get called “amis” rather than “copains”, because fuck you, being close to someone is not a legitimate foundation for mockery.

His classmates don’t appear to get that, though, and it becomes their nickname, just like Enjolras got dubbed the “fearless leader”, which he didn’t take any objection to, either. They claim the names they get called back, they form an alliance, they establish a reluctant peace when their classmates run out of things to say. It feels like closure and preparation for lycée (which they will face and fight and endure together, no, better: which they will make all kinds of wonderful together, they’ve agreed on this, and they’re an unstoppable force even to their parents) at the same time.

They get high on arguments and puns and angry articles, and they love every second of it.

They have sleepovers during which Enjolras tells Combeferre his secrets: That his parents are actually part of the one percent (Combeferre had his suspicions about that one), and how he had to repeat a year because of an incompetent math teacher.

“I could have made it,” Enjolras tells him quietly, “my parents could have hired a private tutor and I’d have made it. I’m not a slow learner, exactly.”

Combeferre knows this: Ever since he got to know Enjolras, he has never needed to pay attention for more than about 40% of a lesson to get the essence of what was taught, and he has no problem determining exactly what 40% is the most important. He doesn’t have a weak subject, he just has lessons that he takes an interest in and which he aces, and lessons that he doesn’t, and which he passes with the minimum amount of work he can get away with doing.

“But he was an atrocious teacher, and half of the class was struggling, and of course some of them couldn’t afford a private tutor, and I thought if more people than usual failed this class, and if it came to light that all of our marks used to be fine, then surely he wouldn’t be allowed to keep teaching.”

Enjolras is a dark outline against the wall, huddled beneath his blankets, and Combeferre can feel himself falling in love. He doesn’t try to stop it, he wouldn’t even if he knew how. He hums a quiet reassurance of ‘still awake, still listening, go on’.

“So I got zero points, and I had to repeat the year, and my father talked to the principal who offered to let me advance to the next year anyway, and I refused, of course.”

“Of course,” Combeferre repeats. He has stopped wondering, at this point, if Enjolras is real or just a figment of his very creative brain trying to make him feel less left out. “What happened to the teacher?”

“He got reprimanded. Like that was going to make him a better teacher,” Enjolras says, disgusted.

“Hm,” Combeferre hums. “I’m glad you chose to repeat that year. Imagine the odds of the both of us meeting in this class, both a year after we should have been.”

“Why, what held you back?”

“I started school after the statutory age of entry, because as my mom likes to put it, I was a ‘late bloomer’. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until age eight, and I had trouble stringing words together.”

The sheets rustle as Enjolras turns to his side to face him. Not that he could see anything, but Combeferre appreciates the sentiment. “Really?” he asks, curious.

“Really,” Combeferre says gravely. “I hated reading with a passion until I turned eleven and my grandmother forced me to take it up by dying before she had the chance to read me the ending of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

“And I couldn’t bring it up with my parents, because obviously, they’d get upset about my grandmother’s death. So I took it as a task she set for me, and I read it from beginning to end as a sort of homage to her, and I cried like a baby when Cedric died.”

Enjolras, who hasn’t read Harry Potter, hmms noncommittally at that.

“I’m sorry about your grandmother,” he says eventually. Combeferre smiles.

“I had thousands of books to console me,” he says. “Or make it worse, but in a less bitter way.”

It’s silent for a long moment, and Combeferre is on his way to asleep when he hears Enjolras murmur: “I’m glad you were a late bloomer, and that we met, and that I get to be here.”

And what does he say to that? His mother tells him to listen to his heart, to his gut, and to his brain. His heart is hammering away in his chest, too loudly. His gut wants him to pretend to be asleep. His brain knows that that is a stupid idea, and supplies him with the absolute minimum of a reaction that he needs to show.

He says, “Me, too,” and his racing heart makes it come out like the confession it’s trying not to be.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please tell me if anything I wrote was in any way offensive to you, and I'll change or delete it!
> 
> Warning for transphobia.

Combeferre likes to think that Enjolras and him would have _had_ to meet and talk and become friends sooner or later: it could have been within minutes of their first shared lesson, or it could have taken until they had a talk on the last school day, when everyone’s tearing up a little and talking to people they don’t usually talk to, but it _had_ to happen at some point. And so it did.

It’s even less of a coincidence with Jean Prouvaire. Ignoring Jean’s presence is a willful act, it takes a lot of energy, and Enjolras and Combeferre aren’t even trying. So they notice how Jean is never quite at war with anyone, and they notice how Jean gets away with wearing makeup and flowery skinny jeans and blouses through sheer unadulterated kindness; how Jean speaks patiently and is friendly with everyone who will start a conversation, but never initiates anything.

And, of course, they don’t miss anything of what other people have to say about Jean either.

“You call it a _girl_?” Combeferre hears Madeleine say once, she says _ça_ _,_ she has shaken and rattled the French language, which will happily humanise everything it can get a hold of, from animals to groceries to garbage cans, until the one dehumanising pronoun fell out. That comment must have taken thought; she must have taken her time creating it, Combeferre thinks. Just a turn of his head away, Enjolras’ mouth is a thin line, he knows that without looking. None of them know a lot about gender, they’ve been stuck on sexuality until now, but Combeferre vows to change that if only so he can leave a well-informed note in Madeleine’s locker.

 _French doesn’t have any gender-neutral pronouns_ , says the text that Enjolras sends him that afternoon, when Combeferre is in the middle of discovering just how many terms simply don’t exist in French yet, and that he will have to borrow from the English language. It makes him smile, because it means that Enjolras followed the same line of thoughts and is now at roughly the same point as him; researching his way through the internet.

And it makes him think about how Zuñi speakers can’t tell apart yellow from orange because they have only one word for them. It makes him think about how deeply language affects humankind, about how futurless languages will force you to think about your future as a more immediate thing, about how Chinese will make you care about whether your Uncle is younger or older than your father. And about how French people, by extension of the argument, must care about and think in gender binary more than others: how it must be harder for them to escape the binary and matter more to them if someone doesn’t match up.

 _As in, none at all, I couldn’t find any,_ Enjolras texts.

 _It’s a problem_ , Combeferre agrees, because indeed, along with humanising everything, the French language has absolutely no problem at all with assigning gender to absolutely everything – again, from garbage cans to animals to people of unknown or in-between gender. Talking about Jean as il-ou-elle is quite a mouthful and feels vaguely disrespectful, along with erasing every possibility that exists aside or between those two options. Combeferre has tried out smashing them together to create _ille_ , which sounds rather like a more pretentious version of _il_ , but he ends up feeling like a coward because that is hiding the issue rather than calling attention to it. _Iel_ sounds more like it could be a thing, but, Combeferre realises, maybe they should wait with this until they got to talk about it to someone who can actually _relate_ to the issue.

 _Why don’t we just ask,_ Combeferre proposes, _Jean will know best what pronouns we should use._

 _I’ve been wanting to talk to Jean for a while,_ is Enjolras’ reply.

Combeferre hopes it will go over well, for Jean’s sake and Enjolras’ sake and to everyone else’s misery, because he is positive that making their duo a triumvirate will force them to rethink their resolution to make their and Jean’s lives as miserable as possible.


End file.
